PARK AND CEMETERY. 
249 
two inches in diameter when fully expanded, and 
do not open until the young foliage is nearly full 
grown. They have a delightful fragrance and the 
trees in flower are a charming sight and might be 
planted to advantage on the margins of copses and 
woodland. The greenish, waxy fruit is often 
tinged with red when fully ripe, and is very orna- 
mental as well as pleasantly fragrant. These trees 
are found south of the Great Lakes and in the 
Alleghanies. Settlers used to plant them about 
their homes and use the fruit for preserves. 
There are several cultivated varieties. Prob- 
ably the best of these comes to us from Staunton, 
111., under the name of Bechtel’s Flowering Crab. 
It has very large, beautiful, double pink flowers, 
very sweet-scented. 
Many Siberian Crabs are desirable ornamental 
trees, beautiful in flower and in fruit, though they 
are not used so much for aesthetic as for utilitarian 
purposes. 
Pyrus arbutifolia is a very small tree or large 
shrub, seldom taller than seven or eight feet. It 
improves under cultivation and has charming white 
flowers in corymbs, followed by pretty, red berries 
as large as small cherries. These are astringent, 
hence the common name of the tree, which is 
Choke-berry. The foliage colors beautifully in 
the fall and does not drop until nearly all the forest 
trees are bare. 
The White Beam, Pyrus Aria, is not planted 
in this country as much as in England. It makes 
quite a large tree and grows rapidly in good soil. 
It has broad, silvery foliage and is a valuable tree, 
especially for exposed situations. There are sev- 
eral varieties. Pyrus Aria Kosti, according to 
Mr. Robinson, “is a handsome tree both in foliage 
and flower. Its leaves are large and silvery and its 
delicate rose-pink flowers are in broad, flat clusters. 
It is a Central European tree, perfectly hardy and 
about ten feet high.” 
I quote Mr. Robinson, because I have not had 
any experience with this tree. 
Leaving the apples, we come to their near rel- 
atives, the Thorns. This is a large group and 
when they do well they are very ornamental. 
With me they are not satisfactory, as some of them 
do not bloom at all and some are badly infected 
with leaf blight. Two kinds, however, meet all 
my requirements as valuable and beautiful little 
trees, perfectly healthy, and flowering profusely 
every year. One of these is Paul’s Double Scarlet 
Thorn, a variety of the English hawthorn, Cratae- 
gus oxycantha. As grown here it forms an up- 
right little tree covered in May with very double, 
deep rose-colored blossoms in clusters, that look 
like tiny roses. They are not really scarlet as 
any rnc cpu see b\' coniparirg the color of the 
blossoms with that of a scarlet geranium. Quite 
near it in tlie Thorn group is planted the so-called 
Evergreen Thorn. Crataegus Pyracantha. This is 
perfectly hardy here, and forms a low tree or bush, 
spreading over the ground, and should be planted 
on the margin of groups of larger trees. It has 
rather small narrow evergreen or nearly evergreen 
foliage. I say nearly evergreen because in severe 
winters the leaves brown so that the tree loses its 
appearance entirely. It has pretty clusters of 
small white flowers in May, succeeded by beauti- 
ful orange scarlet berries. 
Where one variety of Crataegus Oxycantha does 
well the others may be expected to thrive also and 
our dealers offer nine or ten different kinds that 
would probably flourish here, but we have not 
tried them. About their beauty and desirability 
for parks and large grounds there can be no doubt. 
English hawthorns are much used in the public 
grounds in Washington, where they make very 
fine specimens. 
Besides English Hawthorns there is Crata^tgus 
Azarolus from the Levant, which is of very spread- 
ing growth and sometimes attains the height of 
twenty feet. This has beautiful fruits as large as 
hazel-nuts. 
Strange to say it is the American Thorns that 
will not thrive for me. I don’t know why. C. 
coccinea, C. Crus-galli and C. Dcuglasii will rot 
bloom, though they have grown to quite large size. 
I often see the two former species and also Cratae- 
gus cordata and one or two other species in this 
neighborhood growing wild in our marshes and 
copses, and flowering profusely in the spring, but 
they do not thrive on the dry hillside where I have 
tried to establish them. 
Cornus Florida and its variety with pink blos- 
soms are perhaps the most conspicuously beautiful 
of the trees that flower in May. In our woods and 
copses Dogwoods are often thin and leggy in habit 
of growth, and, overshadowed and crowded by 
other trees, the bloom is sparse. But planted in 
rich soil and given plenty of room to develop they 
make beautiful symmetrical trees often twenty feet 
in height and of umbrella form. When they bloom 
they seem to have foliage of flowers so completely 
are they covered with their large blossoms often 
three inches in diameter. 
The variety with pink blossoms was discovered 
in the Virginia woods about fifteen j-ears ago. 
When the flower bracts appear they art small and 
dull red in color but every day they increase in 
size and gradually change to the delicate pink of 
the Wild Rose. 
Two fine Dogw'oods, one with white blossoms. 
